SWRMPO members oppose regionalization effort

Published 6:30 pm, Thursday, May 2, 2013

NORWALK -- An effort in Hartford to regionalize public services and government met concerted opposition this week from elected officials from southwestern Connecticut.

Norwalk Mayor Richard A. Moccia was among the local officials in Hartford on Tuesday to protest "An Act Concerning Regionalism." The bill was passed earlier this month by the General Assembly's Planning and Development Committee.

"It looks like we're talking about regionalization of all services under the state mandate," Moccia told The Hour afterward. "The state has enough of their own problems, budget, taxes, unfunded liabilities, that they have more important things to do than come to try and force their form of regionalization on us. It just doesn't work."

The bill calls to "eliminate regional planning agencies and regional councils of elected officials by January 1, 2015, and to replace such agencies and councils with eight regional councils of governments."

Moccia is a member of the South Western Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (SWRMPO), which addresses transportation issues in the eight-town region of Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Weston, Westport and Wilton.

An Act Concerning Regionalism, if adopted, would create more unfunded mandates, the potential for regional taxation, increase bureaucracy for municipalities, destabilize local budgets and tax structures, force dissimilar municipalities to share resource, and require regions to adopt a Council of Governments (COG), according to a press statement by SWRMPO.

The South Western Regional Planning Agency (SWRPA), under which SWRMPO operates, has explored changing itself to a COG. The effort failed to secure the approval of the legislative bodies of at least four of SWRPA's eight communities,

A COG would put transportation, housing and other inter-municipal issues under the direct leadership of chief-elected officials, according to proponents.

Moccia distinguished between that structure and what is being considered in Hartford.

"We were talking about COGs but working within our own organizations, where it gave the mayors and chief-elected officials a little more authority -- not where the state is going to come in and create the districts and tell us what to do," Moccia said.

"While many of our counterparts from other regions share these concerns, they are especially acute for the southwestern region," said Brennan in the press statement. "Residents of our area contribute more than 40% of the state's tax revenues every year, and in many of our towns, they receive only two or three cents back from the state on each of their tax dollars. Local taxes and fees are the only significant source of funding for their local services. Any dilution of that funding will have grave consequences for our cities and towns."